You Have Lyme, Now What? - Dr. Barrett Deubert

We want to support immune function rather than just kill, kill, kill, treat, treat, treat infections. And when we look at the total toxic burden outside of Lyme, we see mold, we see heavy metals, we see viral loads, we see parabens and plastics, environmental toxins. And so it's rarely just Lyme that is the issue. Well, back to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. You have Lyme, so now what?

When we're thinking about Lyme disease, we have to consider what we talked about in the first episode, which is most importantly, the total toxic burden. The differentiator here is most philosophies would say, hey, you have Lyme, treat that Lyme infection. Yet the questions we should be asking would be, well, why is the immune system unable to suppress that organism of Lyme and manage the infection? I think it's very similar to a virus like chickenpox, where you get it as a kid, the immune system recognizes it, it treats it, it keeps it hidden. And then maybe one day your immune system is jacked, you're stressed out, and guess what happens?

We suddenly get shingles. But not everyone gets shingles. So the questions arise, well, why did you in that season? And when we go back to it, the conversation always goes back to the immune system. And Lyme is very similar.

The philosophy of care is less on treating Lyme and more on improving immune function. And that should be the standard of care for chronic Lyme. And that's true for chronic Lyme, chronic mold, chronic COVID. When we think about these pathogens that wreak havoc on the nervous system and the immune system, we wanna support immune function rather than just kill, kill, kill, treat, treat, treat infections. And when we look at the total toxic burden outside of Lyme, we see mold, we see heavy metals, we see viral loads, we see parabens and plastics, environmental toxins.

And so it's rarely just Lyme that is the issue. There's gut pathogens and parasitic infections and viral loads that have to be addressed simultaneously, which still goes back to let's get the immune system healthy and robust. So today's episode, we're deep diving into how to heal the immune system. And hey, if you don't have Lyme, that's okay. This episode's still for you because we're gonna be talking about practical information to help support immune function regardless of if you have Lyme or not.

So what do we do, right? I think the goal is immune regulation because there's many patients that are, their immune systems are so turned on that we don't want to overstimulate an already turned on immune system. Like we wouldn't throw a bunch of echinacea at a patient whose immune system's already in overdrive. And we don't want to suppress an immune system that's already suppressed. So what do we do?

We regulate. We regulate the immune system. So today we're gonna talk about some practical immune regulators. The first one, without question, is you gotta get your vitamin D levels optimized. Vitamin D has more of a hormonal effect on the body than it does the actual vitamin.

It is a pro hormone. And when we look at vitamin D levels, they should be within the range of sixty to eighty nanograms per milliliter. If you don't know your vitamin D levels, you have to get them checked and you wanna get into that optimal range because when I look at chronically immune, hyper reactive or suppressed patients that are dealing with chronic mold, chronic infections, chronic Lyme, we always see vitamin D out of range. And when we look at vitamin D, it's such a simple thing to support, yet can have such profound effects on immune regulation. So vitamin D regulates part of the immune system called the Treg cells or T regulatory cells.

This is essential at creating immune balance. It has antimicrobial properties and reduces inflammatory immune chemicals. We call these cytokines. That's why vitamin D was so, so important in treating COVID because of its ability to suppress overactive cytokines. Vitamin D needs to be within that sweet spot of sixty to eighty nanograms per milliliter.

Another powerful immune regulator is omega-three fatty acids. Fish oil in proper balance of omega-3s to 6s is a great immune regulator. When we see omega-three fatty acids within balance at the right level, we get a reduced neurological inflammation. It's one of the most powerful opportunities to support the brain. And when we look at chronic Lyme, chronic mold, we are in a situation where we are getting into brain based inflammation.

So having a proper omega-three to omega-six ratio is vital. And when we look at labs again, what we can see is pretty obvious. We get a massive swing to omega-six dominance, which is a pro inflammatory ratio. Make sure you look at your omega-three and six ratio and we treat that accordingly with fish oil, particularly DHA. There's one of my favorite products on the market from a company called Apex Energetics and it's called Brain eDHA.

It has DHA, about twelve hundred milligrams per serving, plus has phosphatidylcholine, which is an essential nutrient for the brain. We wanna have an omega-three index greater than 8%. How do you know what yours is? Well, gotta test. Another great way, number three, to support immune regulation is you've gotta get quality sleep.

Seven to eight hours of deep restorative sleep at night will maximize your body's ability to heal. It helps with, when we look at the brain and draining the lymphatic system, we call it the glial lymphatic system. In order for that system to operate effectively, we gotta get into deep restorative sleep. It also, when we sleep deep and restful, we get into immune surveillance and we get a natural boost of natural killer cells. So one night of poor sleep can significantly reduce immune system function mainly through natural killer cell function.

So priority here, seven to eight, maybe even nine hours of sleep at night will help significantly with immune regulation. The fourth in immune regulation is we've got to support the nervous system. Under chronic infections, usually the nervous system is stuck in a state of anxiousness, anxiety, and fight or flight. So anything that's going to support parasympathetics is going to be beneficial, whether it's diaphragmatic breathing, whether that's cold exposure, whether it's chiropractic care. One of the things that we wanna see with patients is an improved heart rate variability by getting a balance in their parasympathetics.

And most people are very sympathetic dominant when we see any type of chronic infection. Okay, that's immune system regulation. What's next? Well, the second piece to this puzzle would be we've got to improve gut function. We all know that 70% of the immune system, actually the immune tissue resides within the gut.

It's vital that we have a healthy functioning digestive system. What do we focus on? First, we're going to focus on removing offending foods. One of my favorite nutrition plans out there for most patients that are dealing with chronic infections is the AIP, the autoimmune paleo diet. Think I it's a fantastic way to support immune regulation, digestive function, and reduce the inflammatory burden.

How do we do that? Well, typically it's avoiding gluten, dairy. We see eggs sometimes being reactive, processed sugars, alcohol. And when we get into these nutritional plans and they feel restrictive, remember that discipline's never easy when you start to make changes, but yet when you see the freedom of your health experience through discipline and hard no's that it's worth it. It adds so much value to what you're doing that it adds, it's worth it.

It's worth removing the temporary convenience of those foods. When we remove those foods, we also want to help repair the digestive system, particularly the gut lining. Some of my favorite things to do that is colostrum, which you've heard me talk about so many times. We got to make sure your zinc levels are optimized. And so zinc carnosine is a fantastic nutrient mineral to support the gut barrier.

And again, if you don't know where your levels are at, that's why you gotta test. And even L glutamine is an amino acid powder that you can take that helps support intestinal permeability. So we remove, we repair, and we reinoculate. What do we reinoculate with? Well, we do that with probiotics.

So fermented foods and fiber is a great way to support the digestive system, particularly from a microbial balance. My favorite fermented foods are like sauerkraut and kimchi, kombucha and fermented veggies. We can also, if you're non reactive, we can be consuming sources of A2 grass fed fermented dairy like kefir and yogurts. I think they can have some value to us in certain seasons. And when we go through a re inoculation, we then wanna consider, hey, we've removed, we've repaired, we've reinoculated, now we need to rebuild.

And we rebuild the gut by making sure we're taking in lots of fiber. When I mentioned fiber before, the benefit of fiber is that it grows your beneficial bacteria. And fiber alone is a great way to chelate or bind toxins in the gut. And they also help support normal bowel movement. They create blood sugar balance and regulation, which is essential to keep your inflammation levels low.

So when we think about the gut, think about those four domains of remove, repair, reinoculate, and rebuild. And when you look at supporting those pillars within the tier of gut health, we can really move the needle in immune regulation. Most of my chronic Lyme patients, chronic mole patients, I'll commonly see a thread and that is energy is just tanked. Chronic fatigue syndrome, whatever you want to call it, even fibromyalgia is a form of mitochondrial dysfunction. And so a necessary component to healing Lyme is restoring the ability for mitochondria to function and create energy again.

And as you know, one of my favorite nutrients to restore energy is creatine. Creatine monohydrate, particularly from a form called Kriya Pure, is a great way at five grams a day to rebuild energy systems, particularly through the phosphate group of ATP. It will reenergize your mitochondria. And there's some fancy nutrients out there that help raise NAD levels, and I support that. I think that's great.

But for the price point, creatine can be so helpful on virtually everyone unless you have kidney disease. So creatine's one of my go tos. Another nutrient I think super powerful is glutathione. Glutathione is a great way to support the antioxidant system within your cells. And so taking a liposomal glutathione can be a massive step in helping overcome toxic burden, reducing inflammation and restoring mitochondrial function.

When you look at other nutrients, I think that really move the needle in a lot of people's health journey. You should look at magnesium, particularly magnesium threonate. Magnesium, the theonate version crosses the blood brain barrier and can be really effective at restoring ATP in the cells. Magnesium also is relaxing to the body, to the nervous system, and at just one hundred to two hundred milligrams of magnesium threonate a day, it can really make a difference in nervous system function. And it's obviously best to take at night to help you go to sleep and recover and get into those deep restorative sleep zones.

The last pillar is we wanna reduce any sort of neurological inflammation. One of my favorite things to use here is liquid turmeric from a company called Apex Energetics. It is such a powerful natural anti inflammatory. And, if it's not turmeric, sometimes the polyphenol of resveratrol works just as good, if not better. And it's really dependent upon your microbial diversity.

Depending upon the bacteria in your gut, you'll either metabolize resveratrol or turmeric more effectively. And whichever polyphenol works better, both are super effective at reducing the total inflammatory burden on the body, particularly that's in the brain. And when we reduce the inflammation, guess what helps? It's improved, it's the immune system. The immune system is just stronger, more robust and able to handle more load.

We talked about omega-three fatty acids as a opportunity to reduce neurological inflammation as well. And then if you have a practitioner near you and you can do some photobiomodulation, it's a fancy word for using a laser, red light, infrared light therapy on the body. This can be a great way to improve neurological inflammation. It's what we do in the office all the time on any neurological based disorder or chronic Lyme, chronic mold patient case. So when we look at the immune system, there are so many ways to support it.

There's detoxification, there's sweating, right? There's nutrients. We wanna make sure we reduce inflammation, restore the gut function. But see, that's the secret to restoring health in people. You're not going to treat Lyme effectively by treating Lyme.

You treat Lyme effectively by restoring the immune system, by rebuilding the strength of the immune system, by helping the immune system regulate again. And when that happens, then the body has an innate ability to address infections that might have been there for years. It's not as complicated as it looks, but I'll tell you this, it's not easy. It's not easy making nutrition changes and doing sauna four to seven days a week. It's not easy taking supplementation and fermenting foods.

It's difficult, I get it. But I'll tell you, if you hit stride and move your body and sweat, support the immune system through the gut and antioxidants reduce inflammation. As you do these things, you'll regain your health back and more importantly, you regain your immune system. And when you do that, I mean, I think you can conquer just about anything. So my clinical pearls for the day, if you get enough sleep, if you optimize your vitamin D, if you look at nutrients like omega-3s, turmeric, glutathione, if you add in some big time energy producers like magnesium and creatine and you get moving, whether it's walking, training, zone two training, sweat through sauna, I think you can really move the needle in your health journey.

If you need any help, feel free to reach out to us at The Real Health Co. It'd be an honor to serve you. And we just finished up our brain workshop, so make sure you listen to that lengthy podcast as we dive deep into the cause of neurodegenerative conditions in today's society. Thanks for listening to another episode of The Real Health Podcast.